Herbert Spencer - English philosopher and sociologist, one of the founders of positivism, founder of the organic school in sociology, representative of classical liberalism. In the essays collected in this volume, the author documented the process of gradual degeneration in Great Britain after the 1850 of classical liberalism in what in the twentieth century. will be called social liberalism, and the resulting return to the mercantilist and militant social order. Spencer shows how the gradual increment of state power quietly leads to despotism and enslavement. He criticizes lawmakers for ignoring economic laws that coordinate people's desires and efforts; attacks the doctrine of unlimited sovereignty of government, whether monarchical or parliamentary, and the associated concept of rights as created by the state and therefore just as easily abolished by the state.